Following a successful $2.4 million Kickstarter campaign, the makers of the Oculus Rift virtual reality gadget just pocketed another $16 million investment from Spark Capital and Matrix Partners.

"We were fortunate enough to be able to pick investors who we thought would be a great fit," Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey wrote in a blog post. "They really believe in our vision of the future of VR."

Oculus will use the funds to make new hires, experiment with more cutting-edge technology, and "build a badass, consumer VR gaming platform, the likes of which the world has never seen," Luckey said.

Representatives from Spark and Matrix will join the Oculus board of directors to help guide the firm's future decisions.

The Oculus Rift headset made a splash late last summer when it surpassed its Kickstarter goal by almost $2.2 million, and promised a virtual reality designed specifically for video games "that will change the way you think about gaming forever." It boasts a wide field of view (110 degrees diagonal and 90 degrees horizontal), high-resolution display (1,280-by-800 resolution), and ultra-low latency head tracking (6 degrees of freedom) for a truly immersive experience.

"Oculus' headset, the Rift, brings you directly into a world completely controlled by its combination of hardware and software in a unique way that has been the dream of immersive game makers for decades," Matrix general partner Antonio Rodriguez wrote in a separate blog post.

The device scored a nine out of 10 in iFixit's April teardown of the developer kit prototype, though the final 7-inch headset may be assembled differently.

"It might be rough around the edges right now, and the team has loads of work ahead of it before the Rift can go mass market," Rodriguez said, "but to be so wholly transported to another place by such an immersive piece of technology, we immediately knew that this is a piece of the future we wanted to support."

There is no word yet on when the final VR rig will be released to the general public, though the company is accepting pre-orders for the $300 device. The prototype has been generating buzz among developers and gamers (of all ages). Earlier this year, 90-year-old Rachel Mahassel had her mind blown when test-driving the Rift.

"Hey, man alive!" she exclaimed in a YouTube video posted by her grandson, a 3D animator. "It's so real! It's a picture in here, huh?"

Unfortunately, Oculus VR co-founder Andrew Scott Reisse was not around to see his company's successful first phase of funding. The 33-year-old died in late May when he was struck by a car fleeing police in Santa Ana, Calif.

Stephanie began as a PCMag reporter in May 2012. She moved to New York City from Frederick, Md., where she worked for four years as a multimedia reporter at the second-largest daily newspaper in Maryland. She interned at Baltimore magazine and graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (in the town of Indiana, in the state of Pennsylvania) with a degree in journalism and mass communications.
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